and yeah I’m being deliberately circumspect about what kind of design docs my project uses; all I’ll say publicly is they work very well for the type of game we’re making and they saved me SO MUCH TIME this week

Yeah we are at that sweet spot on Motorways right now. Bullet points with emotional/experiential goals (what up Ty Sylvester's eggplant book) and player motivations and, most helpfully, a list of "why Mini games aren't X"

Sounds like it’s working!

I got one of my teams to start writing some basic docs that cover some design and product concepts and it’s been incredible watching them see how quickly their stuff gets prioritized (because we can actually evaluate it) and how much HUNGER there is to write more of them